Paul Jacobson

Tag: facebook

  • Facebook Groups as big as WhatsApp

    Facebook Groups as big as WhatsApp

    I’m working through the announcements at Facebook f8 and one of the slides that really stands out for me is this one: This F8 is all about the future of sharing.Facebook has gone from being one blue app on your phone a few years ago to… Posted by Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday, March 25, 2015…

  • The key to a better quality Facebook News Feed

    The key to a better quality Facebook News Feed

    I much prefer this approach to friending people on Facebook to the more cynical friends-as-followers-to-pitch-to approach. A more select group of Facebook friends is far more meaningful than thousands of “friends” who are just people you connect to because connecting is less meaningful than it could be. Yes, Facebook uses our data to target ads…

  • Facebook + emigration = meaningful sharing with people who matter

    I started posting more to Facebook when we moved to Israel about 2 weeks ago. Most of my posts were (and remain) intended for my friends and family so I share those posts just with them. That is why I haven’t blogged nearly as much about our move. I resisted using Facebook for a long…

  • When machine learning helps us find photo memories

    I am still amazed at how smart machines are when it comes to understanding what we include in our photos. I just ran two simple searches on Facebook and Google+ Photos of my photos and received these results: I think Google’s machine learning is better when it comes to semantic searches although I haven’t conducted any…

  • Ello, good-bye. Stick to @Path or settle for Facebook.

    Ello seems to have captured everyone’s attention with the promise of a better social network that addresses the challenges facing Facebook for many users. I don’t have access to Ello yet but based on what I can glean from the Ello site, it isn’t anything to get excited about. Here is an extract from my…

  • Why targeted ads are bad (it has to do with design)

    I had a brief discussion with Rian van der Merwe on Path about Facebook’s latest ad targeting update. I asked him why better targeted ads are so bad? If you accept that ads are a cost of using Facebook, surely more relevant ads are better? His answer surprised me and I had to think about…

  • Advertising should be about attention, not privacy

    Facebook’s expanded ad model is controversial to say the least. John Gruber made a good point in his post titled “Facebook to Use Web Browsing History for Ad Targeting”: “Google does it” is not exactly a badge of honor, privacy-wise. More and more, the entire advertising industry is turning into a threat to privacy. Advertising…

  • Facebook, @Path and privacy – redux

    One of the fundamental differences between Facebook and Path is that Path is designed around privacy, Facebook isn’t. On Facebook you have to really work to retain some degree of privacy. You have to set up your sharing preferences carefully, decide whether search engines should be able to index your profile and who can re-share…